


Flesh and Blood

by juliasets



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Season/Series 14, Apocalypse World Refugees, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Needles, Poor Life Choices, SPN Eldritch Bang, Sam Winchester Whump, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 17:39:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16706986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliasets/pseuds/juliasets
Summary: Dean's gone, prisoner of the archangel Michael, and Sam has to save his brother at any cost. He's got a bunker full of helping hands, but that's also a bunker full of mouths to feed and people to support and credit card scams can only do so much.That's when Sam remembers the auction, and the monsters who tried to buy his heart for a half a million dollars. When it comes down to it what wouldn’t Sam give to help people? What wouldn't he do to save Dean?





	Flesh and Blood

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the [2018 SPN Eldritch Bang](https://spneldritchbang.tumblr.com/). This was such a fun event and I want to thank the awesome mods for helping it to run smoothly.
> 
> Thanks to my betas, Artherra, Interstitial, and Alyndra, who all played a vital role in making this fic presentable. Any mistakes are mine.
> 
> I was fortunate enough to be teamed up with [IncompetentPigeon](http://incompetentpigeon.tumblr.com/), who drew a wonderfully expressive, moody interpretation of this fic that I adore. Check it out [here](https://imgur.com/a/7BS2KLc)
> 
> Additional warning in the End Notes.

Dean is gone.

Sam can’t escape that knowledge. It dogs his every step. It sours his stomach when he’s brought food by well-meaning residents of the bunker. It keeps him up at night and it haunts his dreams when he can’t stay awake any longer.

Sam understands better than anyone else on Earth what being a prisoner of Michael means for Dean.

Dean has been gone before, but every time is a new horror. Sam has lived through his brother going to hell, through him disappearing off the face of the Earth and reappearing a year later from purgatory. He’s seen Dean become a demon and watched him walk away to become a human bomb.

This time Sam isn’t alone, though. That’s new.

Cas is just as frantic as Sam is. He might be the only other person who gets it, who has had an archangel roaming around in his head. Sam still isn’t quite sure how that matryoshka doll of vessel and angel had worked, but he’s sure it hadn’t been pleasant. But between being their point person on the angel shortage and following up on his own leads he’s rarely around.

Jack is reeling from the loss of his powers. He’s more or less human at the moment, with all the pain and discomfort and misery that entails. He’s been spending most of his time cooped up in his room. Sam knows he should do something to try and break him out of the funk, but he can’t figure out what would help.

Mary and Bobby have been helping settle the refugees in. Sam feels weird around both of them, for different reasons. His mom has been back for almost two years now but she still feels like a stranger. Sometimes it seems too late for them to connect, like they missed their chance at a get-to-know-you phase.

For Bobby it’s the opposite. Sam knows Bobby, or knew his Bobby at least, pretty well. But this Bobby has no idea who Sam is. The disconnect there throws Sam off.

It could be helpful, having these people around. Instead Sam finds himself using precious mental bandwidth comforting and planning and explaining when all he wants to do is put his head down and do the work.

And then there’s the rest of them. Thirty people, give or take. They rely on him. Most are adults, some are even pretty self-sufficient, but they’re all traumatized, all living in a world not their own. With Michael on the loose most of them are staying in the Bunker and Sam and Dean have a strict 100 mile no shenanigans radius around their home base—no fake credit cards, no hustling pool, no stealing cars. It’s their ‘no shitting where they eat’ policy. Sam has some money saved up, but he burns through it and their emergency stash quickly with trying to keep everyone fed and clothed. They need money, even for the basics. Medicine. Toilet paper. Gas for the fleet of cars they’re suddenly using.

When he and Dean run low on cash they usually head out into the vast American unknown and hit up roadhouses and pool halls, VFWs and bowling alleys. But Sam can’t do that, has no time as he scours the entire archives for some way to save Dean.

He considers selling some of the Bunker’s lesser artifacts. They’re not all valuable, but still might fetch some money. He doesn’t need a lot, even a couple hundred dollars would go a long way at this point.

He opens up the Tor browser. Sam is no stranger to dark web marketplaces, actually—they’re a pretty useful resource for rare spell ingredients. But he’s never sold anything on them before. He heads to one of his most trusted sites, but he doesn’t have high hopes. The items he’s willing to part with are that way for a reason—they’re not very rare or useful. It’s unlikely that other people will be interested. Sam would do anything, sell anything, to save Dean, but he can’t chance selling something that might be used to hurt an innocent.

Not yet, at least.

A few hours of searching both the unpurchased sales and the requested items pages confirms his suspicion. It’s a bust. He should pack it in for the night or continue searching for a way to save Dean.

Instead, he erases the URL from the address bar.

He shouldn’t be doing this. He can’t be thinking of this. It’s a dumb thought, through and through. The kind of dumb, reckless idea that Sam usually gets without Dean to keep him on the straight-and-narrow.

The thought has nagged at him in the months since he was strapped to a table in a room Jackson Pollock-ed with blood as Clegg and his hooded accomplice auctioned off his body.

$500,000.

That’s how much his heart had sold for. It’s a small fortune for anyone, let alone hunters living on the fringes of society.

It was an easy thought to ignore, at least for a while. He’s not suicidal. He can’t be, not when he needs to save his brother. So he’s not about to sell his heart. But Clegg had suggested that there were hundreds of thousands of monsters out there living otherwise normal lives. The ‘Butterfly’ had only killed a handful of people. A couple dead loners were not enough food to sustain a population that size.

Like most dark web addresses it’s a random assortment of letters and numerals, but Sam’s got a knack for memorization so he knows just where to go.

And as he suspected, there’s more than just the auction.

What he finds is a bit like a Craigslist for body parts.

A few enterprising morticians are selling organs. Some organs are probably the extra bits from a monster’s kill; Sam should probably look into those. And most importantly there’s a lively trade in blood, either direct from a seller or siphoned off of legitimate blood donations. The prices are steep and Sam wonders how many monsters have jobs lucrative enough to afford to buy their food instead of kill for it, but he doesn’t exactly have time to get bogged down in the tenets of monster socialism.

He shuts down the other programs running on the laptop and boots up his VPN for extra security before logging back into the site.

Sam used to sell his plasma at Stanford, sometimes, when he needed an extra bit of cash. This isn’t that fundamentally different, if more lucrative.

When he weighs the pros and cons it’s a bit of a no-brainer. Sam’s healthy enough that a little blood won’t make a huge difference and it’ll help with his cash flow problem.

It takes a day to acquire the necessary medical supplies, long enough for second-guessing. Surely there are easier ways to make money. But fake credit cards only get you so far. He can’t physically bring himself to drive to some shabby roadhouse, put on the cocky drunk persona, and hustle pool without Dean.

The needle pinches as he feeds it into his vein, but he’s had worse, and any pain is eclipsed by the relief that he’s doing something good, something useful. He clenches his fist to stimulate the flow and the blood bag fills slowly.

It always seems to come back to blood with Sam.

He prices the pint of blood relatively low and it sells immediately.

The money comes through before he even sends off the package and he could pocket it, stiff the buyer, but he’s already done the thing and his red blood cells will regenerate in a few weeks. Meanwhile, the refugees don’t seem to be going anywhere. Better to not burn his bridges. So he sends the insulated package off through a blue USPS collection box and refocuses on the search for Dean.

  


* * *

  


Jack breaks his leg on a hunt and the hospital bills don’t worry Sam much—it happened in Tennessee under a fake name, the bill’s unlikely to ever find them again—but they’re low on the good drugs so Sam boots up Tor. Buying painkillers online always makes Sam feel like shit, guilty like he’s feeding the spiraling opioid crisis in America.

Dean would tell him to stop listening to so much NPR.

On a whim he checks out the monster black market and finds that his account has dozens of messages. When he scrolls through he finds that the buyer posted a glowing review of his ‘product’.

It’s little surprise that his blood is apparently unlike any other human blood the vamp had ever tasted. Sam’s legacy is written in his blood, the darkness that’s dogged his every step. And apparently it’s delicious.

Either way, it affords him an opportunity. Sam’s not going to waste a chance just because it makes him feel bad.

He sets up another sale, over four times the price as the first. It sells out in minutes. Red blood cells replenish in about four to six weeks; the Red Cross requires eight weeks between donations.

It’s been just over a month since the last time. Sam’s a big guy and healthy. Four weeks is probably more than enough for him to get back to fighting weight, especially since he’s not really doing much fighting lately anyway. And given the demand the money he can make per pint is practically a livable income. A reliable source of money would allow him to focus on saving Dean. As far as sacrifices go, this hardly ranks.

With that, it’s settled. He retreats to his room and finds a vein.

  


* * *

  


It becomes routine. Their savings, which had been depleted shortly after returning from the Apocalypse World, begin to replenish themselves. Sam’s been saving up independently, hoping that he and Dean would survive long enough to retire someday.

It’s not quite by the sweat of his brow, but it feels good to provide.

Especially since there’s little progress on finding Dean.

For one of the most powerful beings across multiple dimensions, Michael is quiet. They’ve gotten some reports, a few deaths. People with their eyes burned out—classic angel stuff. Cas insists that Naomi is keeping a tight rein on the remaining angels in heaven, so the dead bodies must be Michael. But nothing showy.

The rest of the world keeps spinning. For the most part Sam acts as their dispatcher, sending off the small army of hunters to take care of everyday ghosts and monsters. He’s the big picture guy and it helps to hide how wobbly he sometimes feels. Bobby consults with him on angelic signs, managing the supplies at the Bunker, and helps keep track of their wayward team. They always have a few people tracking down leads on Michael, but in the meantime there are still spirits and vamps and rawheads to take care of. And for that, they need supplies: guns and ammo, knives and first aid kits, cars. The accomplishment that Sam feels when he’s able to provide what Bobby asks for is worth a little lightheadedness.

And through it all, Sam searches for a way to save Dean.

They get a chance, a month in. They’re following up on leads when their path crosses with Michael and through sheer luck they manage to trap him in a ring of holy fire.

Dean’s face is thinner than Sam remembers, lit up by the flickering glow of holy fire. It’s unnerving to look into eyes Sam knows better than his own and not see _Dean_. Even when he was a demon he was more or less Dean Winchester. But Michael is very clearly someone else wearing his brother like a cheap suit underneath the bespoke one he’s dressed up in.

“Sam,” Michael drawls. “A pleasure.”

They don’t have much of a plan. They weren’t expecting a face-to-face confrontation. Ketch has been unable to dig up another hyperbolic pulse generator. They have the archangel blade, but it’s useless without an archangel to wield it. Jack is powerless.

But Sam thought they should go for it anyway. And here they are.

“Michael,” Sam says with a quick nod.

“I hear you’ve been looking for me. Leaving no stone unturned.”

“Get out of my son,” Mary says.

Michael turns his head towards her. Dean’s not clumsy, not by far, but Michael moves with an unnatural grace that Dean’s never possessed. “Your son agreed to this.”

Sam steps forward, taking the archangel blade out of an inside pocket of his coat. Michael’s raptor gaze locks onto it immediately but his posture stays loose and confident. “That’s useless.”

“We’ll see,” Sam says, because he’s willing to try.

Michael starts a slow smile, but then his face twitches. He bends over, curling inward a bit. Sam exchanges a glance with Bobby, who tightens his grip on his rifle.

“No,” Michael says, but it’s quiet as if he’s talking to himself. When he looks up again it’s not Michael anymore.

“Sam,” Dean says, his voice strained like he’s holding up something heavy.

“Dean,” is all Sam can think to say in response.

“Dean, is that really you?” Mary asks.

Dean nods, his eyes scrunching closed against some internal pain. “I can’t hold him back for long, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, Dean, it’s okay,” Sam says, words piling up behind his teeth and pouring out as he tries to reassure him. “We’re going to get him out. We’re going to get you back.”

Dean looks back up again and meets Sam’s gaze. “Give me the blade.”

Sam’s entire body goes cold. “What?”

“It’ll work, Sam,” Dean insists, holding a hand out towards the ring of holy fire. “I can stop him. I can kill him.”

By killing himself.

Sam was willing to try, before. Deep down, though, he knew the blade wouldn’t work in his own hands. Now, staring at Dean’s desperate expression, something churns in his gut.

Something’s wrong.

Sam steps back.

“What are you doing?” Bobby asks. “Give him the blade.”

“No,” Sam says.

“Sam?” That’s Mary, confused but willing to listen.

“Sam, c’mon, man,” ‘Dean’ says with pleading eyes.

Sam shakes his head. “It’s not Dean. That’s not Dean.”

“What are you talking about?” Bobby asks.

Sam looks over. Bobby’s expression is thunderous. Mary’s next to him, looking conflicted herself. But now that he’s said it Sam knows he’s right. That’s not his brother.

“It’s a trick,” Sam says insistently.

“Son, I know it’s hard…” Bobby tries, voice low and sympathetic.

“No, Bobby,” Sam snaps back. “It’s not Dean. It’s a trick.”

Sam glances back at Dean’s body just in time to see the loathing flicker through Michael’s eyes as he shudders back into himself.

Michael pulls down the ceiling inside his circle, the dust and debris putting out enough of the flames that he’s able to fly off.

Bobby won’t talk to him on the ride home or when they get back to the bunker.

It causes friction for a while. Sam gets it. Bobby’s been fighting off angels for fifteen years after Michael totally destroyed his world. He has more than enough reason to want Michael dead. Bobby thinks Sam passed on his shot to kill the enemy to save Dean. He’s not entirely wrong. But Sam knows Dean like no one else in the universe does and he knows that wasn’t his brother.

Meanwhile, Sam tries to focus on the big picture. After a few days of awkward, chilly silence he and Bobby manage to get back to a level of professional respect that at least allows things to keep running.

And under it all, Sam can’t help but second guess himself. He’s so sure that wasn’t Dean, but what if he was only seeing what he wants to see? He knows he’s compromised, too desperate to save Dean, same as it’s always been.

He decides to take a step back after Michael, focus on the research, find a way to save Dean.

To assuage the vague guilt he feels he cuts down his recovery time for donating blood to three weeks, ups his diet of spinach and lean red meat to compensate. He literally can’t afford to hold back. The food tastes ashy in his mouth but he forces himself to choke some of it down between marathon sessions in the archives. Bobby comments that he’s not looking so hot, but Sam waves him off, talking about a cold and not having gotten any sun in weeks. Seems to do the trick.

Mary helps to pick up the slack. Cas, too. They take the lead on a lot of the hunts while Sam’s been ‘under the weather’. Jack is still reeling from the loss of his powers, but his hunting training is coming along well.

After a few months of this he’s definitely not running at 100%. Sometimes he stands up too quickly and his vision dims. His hands flutter over walls and the backs of chairs as he regains his equilibrium. He gets tired quickly, but that’s nothing that caffeine can’t solve, even if he’s pretty sure he’s immune to it at this point.

There appears to be no upper limit to what monsters will pay for his blood. The reviews turn his stomach, but they work to increase interest in the product. There’s speculation about who he is, why his blood tastes like that, but every user who buys some confirms that it’s the best they’ve ever had.

He’s not doing great, but he’s managing. And that’s when he finds the spell to save Dean.

  


* * *

  


The spell is priceless, but for convenience the dealer has set the price in the six figures.

It’s a staggering sum, more money than Sam has ever earned. Even with months of selling his blood behind him, he’s hardly saved up a fraction.

And he’s out on his own with this. The other hunters like Dean well enough, but they don’t care about him. A spell designed to separate Michael and his vessel is an unnecessary risk in their mind. They’re only interested in killing the archangel who ruined their world.

He considers and discards plans. Theft is out. Rowena confirms that there’s no other copy of the spell he needs.

So he needs to raise the money, quickly.

The idea is there. Has been there, in the back of his mind. Dogging him.

It’s there on the dark web, too. He’s been getting solicits from monsters, the kind who don’t drink blood. There are a lot of them on the site, but it’s still a strangely close-knit community. They talk. The word about Sam’s unique composition has spread.

He tells Cas that he’s going to be gone for a week. Makes a vague excuse. Dean would see right through it, but nobody else does. Mary is in charge of the Bunker in his absence, takes over consulting with Bobby.

“Where are you going?” Jack asks as he watches Sam pack. His duffel is pretty light. It rattles suspiciously, courtesy of the painkillers Sam pilfered from the first aid kid. Fortunately Jack is still pretty innocent. Sam hates to take advantage of his naivety to hide things from him, but Jack is a worrier and he needs to focus on himself. He’s still limping a little from his mostly-healed broken leg.

“I got a lead on Dean. It’s just a week. Cas said he was going to show you how to drive.”

Jack frowns. “You said that you’d teach me.”

“Sorry, buddy,” slips out of Sam’s mouth and his gut twists, thrown back twenty years. Remembers John doing the same thing, making promises he couldn’t keep. He never thought he’d have a chance to make the same mistakes. “It’ll take more than a week to learn. We’ll go on a drive when I get back, okay?”

“Can we take the Impala?”

Sam’s the only person who drives the Impala in Dean’s absence. Every time he does it reminds him of how wrong the world is without Dean at his side. But he can’t deny the hopeful look in Jack’s eyes.

“Sure,” Sam says, trying for a smile. “Definitely.”

  


* * *

  


San Francisco is a lot like Sam remembers it, other than a recent infestation of electric scooters. Chinatown wasn’t his normal stomping grounds back when he was in college, but he finds the storefront pretty quickly. It’s a butcher. How apt.

He’s directed to the back of the store and a narrow staircase which leads up to a dingy hallway.

“You must be Sam.” Sam assumes the man is Dr. Robert. He has thinning gray hair, a neatly trimmed white beard, and old man wireframe glasses.

Dean had told Sam this story years ago, about how a back alley doctor had stopped his heart so that Dean could make a deal with Death to retrieve Sam’s soul from Lucifer’s Cage. Sam actually heard quite a bit about Dr. Robert, his unhygienic office, and his surly assistant. It had been Dean’s way of deflecting attention from the deal he’d made with Death, which he’d said very little about. Sam had stored the information away in the back of his mind, thinking that they might need patching up after a rough hunt someday. He hadn’t expected the circumstances that now led him to contact Dr. Robert, but then again when was the last time Sam’s life had been predictable.

Sam nods as they shake in greeting. “Thanks for doing this.”

Dr. Robert shrugs. “You’re paying.”

The blasé attitude should probably make Sam more nervous, but this is his plan and he’s going to go through with it. Dr. Robert opens the office door. There’s a woman inside the office who’s fiddling with a machine. She’s got dark hair and the kind of casual punk style that no one in San Francisco would even look twice at.

“My assistant, Eva.”

She gives Sam a look that’s supremely unimpressed. Sam can’t exactly blame her. This is a really stupid idea.

Sam turns back to the doctor and pats his duffel. “Is there anywhere I can stash this?”

Dr. Robert nods at a table in the corner and Sam throws his bag there, unzipping a side pouch and removing an unmarked white envelope.

“Here’s, uh,” he says. He hates dealing with the less reputable sides of society. It’s not as if he can judge them—Sam Winchester is thought to be a dead serial killer, and his real story isn’t very far off that mark. But he never fit in on the wrong side of the tracks. There’s always a feeling like any moment everyone will notice that he doesn’t belong and turn on him.

Then again, he’d also felt like that at Stanford. There aren’t many places where Sam does fit in.

“Oh, yes,” Dr. Robert says, taking the cash. He opens the envelope and gives the money a quick once over in lieu of counting it. “Do you have any letters?”

“Letters?” Sam echoes.

“In case something goes wrong.”

Sam shakes his head, not for the first time wondering what the fuck he’s gotten himself into.

“Okay, then. Hop right up,” Dr. Robert says, patting the padded examination table.

Sam has only just sat down when a hand pushes at his shoulder and he’s guided to lie prone. There’s a pinch in his arm as Eva inserts an IV line without any warning, her face stern and focused.

 “You’re sure…” Sam starts, but a mask is pressed down firm over his nose and mouth and a moment later he’s gone.

  


* * *

  


He wakes to pain and darkness. From the streetlights filtering in through the window he can just barely make out the same peaks and valleys of the same ceiling as before he passed out. He hasn’t been moved.

The pain is intense, encompassing his entire chest. It’s not as bad as being flayed, but it’s a near thing. He grits his teeth and tries to breathe through it.

The click of a door opening is soft even in the quiet room, and then Eva is leaning over him and fiddling with a machine.

“How… did it… go?” he grinds out through clenched teeth and panted breaths.

“Congrats,” Eva deadpans. “You’re down half a liver.”

Relief rushes through him chased by painkillers, and they carry him down into unconsciousness.

  


* * *

  


Sam presses a hand against his stomach, feels the line of stitches there. There’s pain, of course, but Sam’s no stranger to pain. The empty space he feels inside of him is probably imagined; the human body doesn’t really have the internal nerve endings there for him to be able to sense the missing part. Eva was exaggerating earlier, it’s really only about a third of liver that they’ve removed, and it’ll grow back eventually. Human livers, somewhat uniquely, have the ability to regenerate. It takes about six weeks for one to grow back to full size after a live liver donation.  Barely anything to notice.

It’s nothing when compared to the void he feels in Dean’s absence.

For a moment he’s sick, ashamed. There are thousands of people waiting on liver donations. He could save someone’s life with that chunk of organ.

He reminds himself that he is saving a life with it. Dean’s life.

Eva mails it for him, doesn’t even ask where it’s going. If she or Dr. Roberts find anything strange about Sam sending an organ off through the United States Postal Service, they’re not interested in finding out more.

For purchases this big the money is kept in some sort of shady monster escrow. It made him nervous, but he’s not even finished healing when the payment comes through. He doesn’t know what kind of monster bought a lobe of his liver for several hundred thousand dollars, but apparently they don’t regret it.

He never thought he’d have this kind of money.

He doesn’t get much time to appreciate the feeling of being moderately rich, which is probably a good thing since he’d accepted it in unstable cryptocurrency. It doesn’t matter because it’s gone almost immediately as Sam uses his laptop to purchase the spell.

He spends a few days recuperating in Dr. Roberts’ office. He’s still in rough shape when he heads out, but he can’t hide away any longer. He’s not looking forward to the drive.

Sam downs just enough of the painkillers he brought to take the edge off and heads back to the bunker. It takes him two days, even though he’d managed it in just under a day on the trip out. Fifteen hours in on the first day he has to cave and get a motel room due to the jagged pain in his gut.

When he finally makes it back to the bunker he steels himself for the show, hoping to deflect any attention away from the slow, stiff way he’s still moving.

Fortunately he stopped by their P.O. Box in Nebraska on the way in and the spell he’d bought was already there. It serves to distract Cas and Mom and Jack. They’re too excited that he’s found a way to save Dean to spare more than a passing glance at Sam’s wan face and careful movements.

He doesn’t tell Bobby about the spell, not yet. They’re still operating on an unspoken truce, not discussing Sam’s quest to save Dean. Interactions with Bobby are tricky. Before, Sam always came off too familiar, too used to relying on a Bobby Singer who was practically a father to him. Since their fight he’s been forced to remember that this man is a stranger to him, and vice versa.

Cas notices that something is wrong and offers his healing abilities if he’s injured. Sam desperately wants to take him up on it, already exhausted by the constant throb of pain, but he knows that if Cas tries he’ll be able to sense what Sam’s missing. So instead Sam brushes off his concern and insists that he’ll be fine once Dean is back.

It’s true, Sam thinks. It has to be true.

  


* * *

  


Michael escapes, but Sam doesn’t care because Dean is finally, finally free.

It feels like surfacing after almost drowning. For the first time in months he can breathe easy.

Or easier, other than the stabbing pain that still ricochets through his chest when he inhales. Or moves.

With the archangel banished the spellwork painted over the factory floor is inert, but Sam wouldn’t hesitate to go to his brother even if it wasn’t. Dean is swaying on his feet in the center of the sigils. He still doesn’t look like himself, all dressed up in Michael’s Prohibition-era cosplay.

He only just manages not to flinch away when Dean collapses into a hug. It’s been three weeks since the surgery. Pain shoots through his gut, but he ignores it and hugs his brother closer.

It only takes a few moments for Dean to get himself together. They have an audience: Rowena, Cas, Mom, Jack. Dean puts his dumb macho bravado on, leans on it like a crutch, like it’s the only thing holding him up.

Sam just wants this all to be over so badly that he goes along with it, swept up into the wake left by Dean’s denial.

They aren’t far from the bunker, so it only takes a few hours to get home. Sam feels better when Dean is showered and changed into jeans and a tee and a flannel, looking like nothing has changed. He’s a little thinner, his eyes haunted. But it’s Dean.

They run into other people in the bunker, who startle at seeing Michael’s vessel out and about and scurry off to gossip about this turn of events. After Dean collapses into his bed Sam calls a meeting in the library.

“Dean is back. Michael escaped, but he’ll need to find another vessel. A weaker one.”

Glances are exchanged. “How can you be sure he’s gone?” a woman asks.

“Cas checked him out,” Sam says with a nod towards Cas.

Sam tells Bobby about the spell when he asks, eager to make sure everyone knows that Dean really is back, that this isn’t one of Michael’s tricks.

Bobby’s upset. Sam isn’t sure if he’s upset that Michael’s in the wind or that Sam worked this spell without him. In the overwhelming relief of Dean being free Sam can’t bring himself to care.

Science says it takes six weeks for his liver to grow back, but Sam only waits five before he breaks out the needles and tubing. He’s going to stop soon, but it’s only been two weeks since Dean got back and they haven’t even left the Bunker yet. This is just to tide them over until they’re back on their feet. Sam doesn’t want to leave Dean alone to go hustle up some money and Dean isn’t up to heading out.

At least he’s eating better now, with Dean back in the kitchen. The constant nauseous worry Sam felt with Dean gone has faded and he’s almost able to clear his plate at dinner. The low grade headache he’d been ignoring disappears. He’s doing better.

Dean is Dean, acting like he’s fine, even as his mood swings wildly between melancholy and giddy and angry. He once told Dean that he knew him better than anyone else and the intervening decade has only fine-tuned his senses.

A month after they get Dean back they find a hunt. It’s a simple salt and burn, almost below their pay grade. Dean tries to act like he doesn’t notice the kiddie gloves.

The Impala rolls out of the bunker and onto the cracked Kansas roads under a clear blue sky and it’s like coming home.

He should’ve known it was too good to be true. Sam’s ideas never pan out.

They stop in the ass-end of nowhere for the night and Dean decides they should try to rustle up some money. It’s going great until one of their marks says something snide—Sam doesn’t even catch what it is—and Dean’s suddenly throwing punches. Sam, usually so in tune with his brother’s moods, doesn’t even see it coming. He takes a nasty hit to the gut from one of the mark’s friends as it escalates, zero to sixty, into a full on brawl. His surgical incision is mostly healed but it still knocks the breath out of him, doubles him over and leaves him vulnerable to the follow up punch to the jaw.

Dean’s swings are a little wilder than normal and Sam’s seeing double, but they eventually wipe the floor with the assholes and beat a hasty retreat from the bar.

It’s only when they’re in the car and peeling away down the highway that Sam lets his ire show. “What the hell was that, Dean?”

“Me? What about you? You almost got taken out by Joe the Plumber back there, did you forget how to fight while I was gone?”

Sam’s jaw aches and he cradles it gingerly. “So sue me for not expecting you to punch out our mark. You realize we left like two hundred dollars back there, right?”

“Whatever, we can earn it back,” Dean says.

That $200 was a good chunk of what’s left over from the last sale Sam made. They’re running low now and he’s not entirely sure that they _can_ earn it back, not if Dean’s going to fly off the handle like this. The pain in his chest and face is making him irritable, which is how he explains that his next words are: “We can hand the hunt off.”

The moment the words leave his mouth he knows it’s the wrong thing to say.

“We’re not handing the hunt off,” Dean seethes.

Sam doesn’t respond, sure that there’s nothing he can do to derail this train wreck.

“Is there something you want to say to me?”

“No.”

“Good,” Dean says. “Keep it that way.”

Sam knows better than to take it personally. Knows what Dean’s going through, the horrifying experience of having your body stolen away from you. Dean has always been all about bodily pleasures, whether it be food or sex or fast cars. He could trust his body. Even when he was struggling with the influence of the Mark of Cain or becoming a Demon, Dean’s body was still his own. He’s never had to deal with that type of betrayal before.

Sam hasn’t been so lucky. He would have given anything to keep Dean from knowing what that felt like.

And it’s hard, when Dean is like this, not to blame himself. Dean had said ‘yes’ to save Sam, after all.

He’d thought that saving Dean from Michael would assuage that guilt. But Dean is still suffering and there’s nothing Sam can do to help.

Well. There’s one thing.

  


* * *

  


Sam doesn’t let them run that low on cash anymore. It doesn’t fix Dean, but Sam can tell that it reduces the stress he’s under, can see it in the line of his shoulders. It helps. That’s enough for Sam.

The refugees suffer a few setbacks, and Sam fronts Bobby the money he needs. Jody Mills arranges for him to take over the abandoned Singer Salvage, even though he didn’t share his counterpart’s fondness for Sioux Falls. Fixing up the house takes a bit of doing, but Sam figures it’s a worthwhile investment.

Sam is anemic, but he’s dealing. He tells himself every time that this will be the last time, but it only takes a few weeks before the itch is back. There’s always something else they need, something Sam can provide if only he’s not too selfish. His blood has been a curse for so long that to see something good come out of it is seductive and Sam falls hard.

Some days he tells himself that he’s doing good beyond a steady income. That he’s keeping these monsters from attacking humans, or stealing donor blood. Sam wouldn’t feel safe donating his blood to the Red Cross anyway. He’s just participating in the modern gig economy. Etsy for bloodsuckers.

It’s not without its challenges. Now that Dean’s back Sam can’t store the cold packs he uses to ship the blood with in the freezer, not without raising suspicion. It’s also harder to find time to head out and drop packages off in the mail.

There are also the messages from monsters who want more than blood. Whoever ended up with his liver posted rave reviews and plenty of others want in on the action. After all, he could live with only one kidney, right? What did he need his pinky finger for? Surely his liver has grown back by now? They offer outrageous sums of money.

Most days, Sam laughs at them.

But some days they hit somewhere in him, somewhere that’s a little twisted, and he finds himself wondering the same. He looks at his body and can’t help but wonder if this is the best use he has for it. Glances down at his limbs and sees dollar signs. Looks in the mirror and thinks about the things they’ll need in the future. The thoughts travel along old routes from darker points in Sam’s life when he’d been more than willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. They slip into his mind at the most inopportune times.

When they’re doing well it’s not hard to beat the thoughts back. Sam’s experienced dealing with intrusive thoughts, hallucinations, addiction. For all that his mind seems prone to these issues, it’s given him a unique skill set to battle them with.

They’re doing well now, so he’s okay. Mostly.

  


* * *

  


He’s slipping a pint of blood into a collection box in Smith Center when there’s a familiar itch between his shoulder blades.

He’s being watched.

Sam keeps his posture loose and unhurried. He scopes out the post office, but it’s mostly empty except for a couple senior citizens and the smiling employees.

When he pushes open the glass door he half expects to see the Impala and Dean, to be caught out sneaking around yet again. But the parking lot is mostly empty except for the junker he’s been using (an ‘83 Chevy Celebrity box on wheels). He scans the town from his peripherals, but doesn’t see anything. There are a few cars parked on the street that could have someone sitting in them, it’s impossible to tell through the glare from the bright sun.

The feeling goes away once he’s in his car and headed out of town, but he files it away.

A few weeks later he’s once again drained and tired and dropping a package full of his blood at the same post office and senses it again. Even though it’s nothing more than a vague sense, it’s enough for Sam to act on. He hasn’t survived this long by ignoring his intuition. It’s annoying because this was the closest post office, but he was probably being careless in using it so frequently.

But the feelings keep coming. They’re sporadic. Picking up groceries in Lebanon, visiting Jody in Sioux Falls, even on a few hunts.

He’s being followed.

Whoever is doing it is good, considering Sam has yet to spot them.

Given the wide geographic distribution he suspects demons, but subtle is a strange look on them. Same with angels. Dean had said that Michael didn’t really see Sam and the other hunters as a legitimate threat, but that might have changed after Sam ousted him from Dean’s body.

Cas is away with heaven duties. He’s not really comfortable going to Mary. Dean’s still got enough on his plate. It’s just a feeling. Maybe he’s imagining it.

A few weeks later he’s taking down a vampire nest with Dean. They split up, heading in separate entrances. Sam neatly beheads one vamp, but another catches him from the side and they go down in a tangle of limbs, Sam’s machete clattering out of his grasp. The vamp’s fangs are already out and he lunges at Sam’s neck. Sam throws an arm up, the vamp catches it with his fangs and draws blood.

There’s a moment of stillness, shock. “It’s you,” the vamp says.

Sam takes advantage of his distraction and twists his weight to dislodge the bloodsucker. Vampires have augmented strength, but most rely too much on that, don’t have any hand to hand experience.

Sam lunges on hands and knees towards the discarded machete, whips around and uses the momentum to sever the vampire’s neck.

_‘It’s you.’_

He can’t be sure what the vamp meant by that, but as he glances down at the gouge it took out of his arm, he has a suspicion.

Etsy vendors don’t have to worry about accidentally killing their clients.

Sam catches up with Dean and they finish clearing out the nest, but Sam can’t stop thinking about the vampire’s words and the itch at the back of his neck that’s been trailing him across the country.

  


* * *

  


He’s always been cautious, but he ramps it up after that. He stops mailing anything from Kansas, waits until they’re on the road and drops packages off late at night after Dean’s asleep or when they’ve split to take on the case. He switches VPNs and cryptocurrency wallets and spends a lot of time hiding his digital tracks.

The being-watched feeling never totally goes away, but it subsides.

  


* * *

  


They’re at Bobby’s place in Sioux Falls. Dean’s out in the yard, working out his frustration on the engine of an old Ford truck. Sam and Dean don’t need to visit as frequently as they do—the Bunker has a better library, more resources—but an afternoon under the hood of a car seems to help Dean, so Sam makes excuses for them to drive up as often as he can.

Sam knows that Bobby is still having a hard time starting his business back up. It’s hard to explain to his old customers and suppliers how he’s back from the dead. The words ‘witness protection’ have been thrown around a lot. In any case, it’s slow going, and Singer Salvage wasn’t the most lucrative gig to start with.

After Bobby’s death, Dean and Sam had realized how much they’d come to depend on him. It was too late, then, to show his gratitude, though he hopes rescuing Bobby from hell had helped a little. Even though this Bobby isn’t the same, Sam’s determined to do more for him than he did for the original.

Their visits could be better. Dean and Bobby tend to butt heads when they discuss strategy for Michael. This Bobby is okay with acceptable losses, something Dean just isn’t ready to compromise on. Sam’s always been the more mercenary of the two of them when it comes to the greater good, but that line of thinking has gotten him in trouble before. He’s learning to follow Dean’s lead.

It doesn’t help that Sam and Bobby have never really recovered from their schism during the search for Dean. Sam doesn’t think that Dean knows much about that and neither he nor Bobby want to rehash it in front of him.

In the meantime, he tries to give Bobby a couple hundred dollars when he can. Sporadic blood donations can only do so much. He can’t sell any more frequently or he’ll leave himself vulnerable on hunts. He still might have been tempted if it was just him, but he won’t put Dean in danger like that.

He’s still cutting it close. Jack has commented a few times on his pallor and even Dean’s asked if he’s coming down with something. He should stop. He knows that. He does. He’s known it for a while, but what he doesn’t know is how. How to ignore the needs of the many for his own. How to tell himself that it’s not worth it. Sam knows the arguments, he’s had them all with himself.

What’s a little dizziness when compared to the casual sprawl of Dean sitting across from him in a bar, instead of hustling pool? What’s a little nausea in the face of being able to help Bobby and Charlie and all the people he’s failed before?

Sam’s road to hell has always been paved with his blood and choices. A part of him still wants to think he can build a better road out of the same.

  


* * *

  


The status quo is just about manageable but then Charlie needs a new laptop and they’re thinking of getting Jack a new-used car and Bobby is hit with back taxes. And then there’s the usual being nickel-and-dimed of hunting—ammo, silver, and opiates.

Sam tries to help, but it’s beyond his resources. Their savings deplete quickly, more quickly than his blood replenishes.

On top of it all Michael ramps up his efforts, leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake. Dean gets wound tighter and tighter with each one, and he’s not the only one. Many of the other hunters have retreated from apartments they were renting back into the bunker, terrified of the monster who destroyed their planet. It gets crowded and tense. Sam and Dean put up extra warding and hope that it’s enough.

Everyone is stressed and it bleeds into Sam. He does what he can, as little as that is. They don’t have a game plan to take the archangel down. Sam can tell he’s struggling; he’s losing sleep, and between that and his low blood volume he’s constantly worn down and tired. His appetite is shot. He’s cranky and paranoid, starting to feel watched and hunted even here in the safety of the bunker. In his nightmares when he’s not watching his family die he sees the hooded figure who had been working with Clegg to harvest organs for sale. He doesn’t hack into Sam the way he had on the livestream. He just watches and Sam’s brain does the dirty work of feeling guilty for still being mostly whole.

And that’s when he gets the message.

Sam knows about kitsune, though they’re rare, especially in the United States. Amy will always be a sore spot. He’s never heard of a kumiho, but they’re the Korean variant on the species. Apparently instead of dining on pituitary glands their diet is all adrenal glands.

The adrenal glands, which sit just above the kidneys.

Whoever this monster is, they’re in the same boat as Amy Pond had been. Normally able to survive on the tissue of the dead, but an illness requires something… fresher.

They have money. Not as much as others have offered, but enough to take care of all the problems that have cropped up around Sam and then some.

He can’t be sure if it’s his general mood or the residual guilt from what happened to Amy, but the idea sinks its teeth into him and doesn’t let up.

He tries to ignore how very apt that metaphor is.

  


* * *

  


It’s harder to ditch Dean than it was to slip away last time. In the end Bobby provides a useful cover. Their Bobby had hidden stashes of books and occult items in various places around the country. Sam and Dean had found some of them, but not all. This Bobby had the same strategy, so he’s in a better place to find some of those caches. He asks for Sam’s help sorting through the books he thinks he’ll find. Dean begs off and Sam feels guilty for his relief.

They head out west and find the first stash in a cabin in one of California’s northern forests. It’s ramshackle from the outside, but in good repair and only moderately dusty on the inside. They spend a few days piecing through the books to determine which were worth carting back to the Bunker or to Singer Salvage. When he says that the next stop is Sedona Sam begs off for a few days, saying he wants to visit an old friend in San Francisco. Bobby shrugs him off and Sam takes the 505 down towards the bay while Bobby continues on through Sacramento.

The butcher shop smells the same, death and old blood. Sam waves an awkward hello as he heads back and up the narrow staircase. 

Dr. Robert seems a bit more annoyed when he answers the knock on his office door. Eva the grumpy nurse isn’t there, replaced by a rather stocky man who seems to share her unimpressed demeanor.

Dr. Robert doesn’t check the contents of the envelope full of cash that Sam hands over, but Sam chalks that up to trusting him after last time.

“Kidney removal is much easier than liver surgery,” Dr. Robert says as Sam climbs up on the table. “Really. This should be pretty painless.”

Sam nods as the nurse—he hadn’t gotten a name—continues setting up the machines that surround the examination table.

“Recovery time is much less, too.”

Sam doesn’t remember Dr. Robert being so chatty. It pings his hunter’s instincts and Sam’s suddenly on alert. “Are you nervous?”

Dr. Robert doesn’t meet his eyes, fiddling with a tray of surgical tools.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asks as the adrenaline hits.

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Robert says.

Sam moves to stand—to do what he doesn’t know—when there’s a pinch in his neck and he’s gone.

  


* * *

  


Sam wakes slowly.

A steady beat throbs in his head, which is otherwise filled with cotton.

Drugged.

Time moves sluggishly behind his closed eyes. He can’t be sure how long he floats in darkness. Everything feels far away but eventually he moves.

When he shifts the cuffs on his wrists and ankles bring him up short.

His eyes open and ten years fall away like nothing in the face of the devil’s trap ceiling grate and slowly spinning fan.

Very little of his moan makes it past the cloth gag in his mouth.

“I gotta say, I’m impressed with your Bobby. This room is something else.”

Sam twists his head to look, but he needn’t have bothered. He knows the voice.

Bobby is leaning on one of the desks that line the circular room.

“Don’t give me that look, kid. This isn’t personal. You’re just a means to an end.” Bobby pushes away from the desk and Sam spots a laptop behind him open to a familiar page from the dark web.

Fuck.

“I wouldn’t beat yourself up. We’ve known what you were doing for a while.”

_We?_

“Your kid was worried about you, just before you off and disappeared for a week. He came to me. “

_Oh, Jack…_

“And then you come back with a spell so rare that I knew it had to cost you. And you always seemed to have money. Wasn’t like I could complain about that. And I really do like you, kid.”

Sam almost rolls his eyes, but his head is still spinning with whatever drugs still run through his veins.

“Well, I liked you a lot more before you had a shot at Michael and didn’t take it. I get it, you wanted to save your brother. But you understand why we can’t trust you.”

There’s the _we_ again.

Bobby moves closer, up to where Sam’s arms are cuffed to the top of the cot. When he reaches out there’s an answering twinge in Sam’s arm and that’s how he realizes that there’s a needle in him, red blood running hot down a tube to somewhere under the bed.

“I looked up some archived videos of Clegg, but he was wasteful. We’re doing this smart. Draining the blood first, selling it off separate. We already have buyers lined up for the rest of you. It’s a small fortune.”

Sam glares, but Bobby isn’t fazed. That’s fine, he doesn’t know them well enough yet. Doesn’t know the Winchesters enough to be scared. Dean is the best hunter alive. He’d find him.

“You’ve still got both your kidneys. For now. The kumiho that messaged you, that was us. Read about your deal with the kitsune in one of Bobby’s old journals, got the idea from him. But they really do exist, and they’ll be happy to pay top dollar for both your kidneys. If it’s any consolation, we’re going to use the money to take on Michael.”

There’s a buzz. Bobby looks down at his cell phone, a recent model smartphone that Sam had given him the money to buy. He’d thought it would help with his business.

“That would be your brother. He’s been calling your number for a few days. It took us a while to get you back here. I’m gonna tell him we split up in California, but we’ll all help him look.”

It’s hard to tell if the sinking feeling in his stomach is dread or blood loss or drugs.

Bobby heads towards the door.

“Bye, Sam.”

Sam twists in his bonds, but the blood loss is already catching up with him. Darkness is creeping in at the edge of his vision.

He’s died like this before, alone in the dark, drained of blood.

The panic room door squeaks open. Bobby steps through and the door slams shut behind him like a coffin.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Warning:** Ambiguously unhappy ending.
> 
> Thank you for reading!  
> I'm pretty useless on social media, but feel free to follow me on [Tumblr](http://julia-sets.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/julia_sets)


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